Humanverse

Rome vs Romell

American parents have registered 6,075 Romes since 1880, against 1,582 Romells. Rome is still ahead, with 760 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rome against Romell, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rome Romell

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 119 years in which either name was published, Rome for 77 years and Romell for 42 years. The lead changed hands 20 times.

13 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Rome Romell
Total US births 6,0751,582
Most in one year 76039
Babies in 2025 76023
Estimated living today 5,7001,400
Median age today 427
Peak year 20242014
Best rank 450th boys2,929th boys
Rank in 2025 452nd4,396th
First recorded 18821920
Girls / boys 503 / 5,57298 / 1,484

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Romells alive today are over 27; half the Romes are over 4. That is 23 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Rome Romell
England and Wales 1,59353

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Rome and Romell.